The new news 24 thread

[SiC]

Thanks to Taxi Paul of this parish, I have a new* car radio that I intend to put in the 1100. Before I did that, I thought I better wire it up to some speakers to see if it worked.

 

In action. The screwdriver is a makeshift aerial that worked surprisingly well! (Sorry for the awful radio station that we all hate now)

[Video]

 

Power draw isn't too shabby either.

 

Next up is to disconnect the tape player head and wire up a 3.5mm cable so I can play stuff through my phone while having the retro sound of a 80s amplifier. Because 21st and all that.

[BorniteIdentity]

That power switch looks immeasurably satisfying to operate.

 

Great work, SiC!

[Ghosty]

When we bought Mother Ghosty's Cooper S two years ago it'd had the split rim wheels refurbished. They'd been powder coated in one piece, and this is starting to fail in the join between the face and lip, where corrosion is manifesting somehow where the powder coating hasnt, well, coated properly.

 

A full refurb costs more than a set of new Ultralite wheels.... You can see where I'm going.

[stuboy]

Had this spoiler in my shed for my missus focus, but she dont want it and wondered if suited the mondeo...

[Supernaut]

No, it doesn't.

[Christine]

Had this spoiler in my shed for my missus focus, but she dont want it and wondered if suited the mondeo...

Yes it does . 

 

Stuperb !

[shoddybanger]

A month ago I replaced the right rear brake piston on the Nubira (see here) and a couple days ago the wife, who does most of the driving on it, reported a grinding noise coming from the rear left of the car. I did that side last summer... or tried to, what with the new brake piston being too fat to fit in the caliper bore. I suspected that cleaning the old pitted piston and replacing the seal ring with a new one wasn't good enough, but didn't expect it to pack up this quick.

 

Yesterday wife reports that the brake warning light is now staying on, so I topped up the brake fluid. A known good brake piston and seal kit is ordered.

 

I'm also browsing for cheap C5 estates, as I want to experience one. There's one for sale that's apparently well cared for, but the suspension has packed and car won't rise. Would require trailering, and it's a couple of hours away, too. Hm.

[SiC]

Wired in a 3.5mm jack into this SPARKOMATIC radio. Easy little job for anyone to do on any cassette radio. Basically desolder the wires on the magnetic pickup head.

 

Chop a 3.5mm cable. Solder the pickup wires to the cable. Generally red is right, white is left and other colour is ground.

 

Tidy up.

 

Enjoy. Sound quality is awful as the speaker isn't really designed for the wide frequency range of this track. Also way under spec on what should be connected to it. Better speakers should sound a lot better. Gives you an idea though.

[Video]

Fiddling with the tone control and the input source volume did help reduce some of the distortion.

 

At least it gives an authentic sound quality of the 70s/80s!

 

Just need to finish the car now!

[stuboy]

Yes it does . 

 

Stuperb !

touch of sarcasm there ?

[taxi paul]

Top work. You have lots of snazzy stuff. My way of testing it would have been to balance it on the wing of car. Put wires to battery. Try and turn it on and then knock it off wing onto floor. good work all round.

[Squire_Dawson]

Stuperb !

 

lolz. One for the AS Lexicon that.

[SiC]

Top work. You have lots of snazzy stuff. My way of testing it would have been to balance it on the wing of car. Put wires to battery. Try and turn it on and then knock it off wing onto floor. good work all round.

Tools of the trade!

[dozeydustman]

House move all going well thankfully. Just furniture to take over there tomorrow.

 

Can’t wait to be out of this cold creaky house

[Christine]

touch of sarcasm there ?

No ...like i said before, it's really groovy man

[SiC]

In other news, 100 quid gets you this nowadays.

 

2 light bulbs. Naturally being Audi they use a newish size that are bloody expensive. That's a good price for a pair too, most retailers want double that for them. Got them from Amazon and they go up + down like a yo-yo in price, so been waiting to catch them at the low point.

 

I can't complain though as these have done 179k miles and nearly 9 years. They still work but are noticeably dimmer than many other cars. You can not own an Audi and not have Retina Burners on the front, right?!

 

Fitting them required gouging the eyes off the car.

 

Looks worse than it is. 4 bolts to remove the light, undo connector and the whole thing slides off. Way better than cutting your hand to pieces trying to get to the back of them while the clusters are still fitted - like most cars.

 

Once out, twist off cap.

 

Unplug connector and twist out bulb. Reverse to complete.

 

Old bulb (left) Vs new bulb (right).

 

Old.

 

New

 

Old bulb had all this crap built up on the back of the envelope.

 

I'm curious to see the difference at night now. Was tempted to only do one bulb to see if it was significantly noticeable. Suspect it is, but would help justify that £100 pricetag.

[mrbenn]

£100 for two bulbs?

 

Bloody hell fire.

[SiC]

Just found this interesting post about HIDs and their construction:

https://priuschat.com/threads/not-all-hid-bulbs-are-created-equal.101472/

 

Complex little beasts.

[Kiltox]

£12 a year in headlight bulbs - progress?

[320touring]

£12 a year in headlight bulbs - progress?

Cheap for blinding the fuck out every cunt;)

 

Seriously though SiC - nice to see you installing these - they have been a mystery to me this far, but it looks a relatively painless experience!

[vulgalour]

Hang a couple of Tilley lamps off the door mirrors, job jobbed.

[dean36014]

It's March, therefore it's spring which means it's time for the bx to come out of hibernation. Great fun driving into work until the first of the water temperature warning lamps came on. A quick check at the side of the road and it didn't seem like it was a hot engine so onwards with the journey watching for the next warning light like a hawk. However the first warning light went back of and he drove perfect the rest of the way. On the way home the same thing again. I'm going to change the thermostat incase it's gone lazy while it's been parked up. The main radiator hoses didn't feel overly hot so I'm hoping it's just a thermostat issue.

 

Sent from my TA-1012 using Tapatalk

[Craig the Princess]

I bought a pair of lightbulbs for £100 once, it did come with the rest of the car for free mind.

[stuboy]

I bought a pair of lightbulbs for £100 once, it did come with the rest of the car for free mind.

I bought a pair of lightbulbs for £5 once, it did come with c reg beige maestro

[stuboy]

Top work. You have lots of snazzy stuff. My way of testing it would have been to balance it on the wing of car. Put wires to battery. Try and turn it on and then knock it off wing onto floor. good work all round.

 

id gone battery charger in the kitchen

[SiC]

Cheap for blinding the fuck out every cunt;)

 

Seriously though SiC - nice to see you installing these - they have been a mystery to me this far, but it looks a relatively painless experience!

Key thing is to make sure no power is going to the light when doing it. Obviously on the Audi the whole light cluster is disconnected so you can guarantee that.

 

Why? The bulbs startup with 15-20kV and then use 45-120v to sustain the arc. Enough to at least give you a nasty shock.

[SiC]

£12 a year in headlight bulbs - progress?

Wait till cars built recently with their LED dipped+main beam headlights get older. AFAIK they're sealed units and require the replacement/refurbishment of the whole light cluster to fix them.

[320touring]

Key thing is to make sure no power is going to the light when doing it. Obviously on the Audi the whole light cluster is disconnected so you can guarantee that.

 

Why? The bulbs startup with 15-20kV and then use 85-120v to sustain the arc. Enough to at least give you a nasty shock.

Good to know cheers!

[mark1986]

Not had a great run of luck this week. Tuesday morning on the way to work in the Clio, decent sized lump of something flicked up by the van in front. Big chunk out of the screen, Autoglass guy came to have a look but as I'd half expected, it's too much damage to be repairable so new screen on order.

 

Thursday, same bit of dual carriage way (must have been less than 300 yds from the 1st incident), front right puncture. Managed to get to a safe spot & get the spare swapped on but with an MoT in two weeks & tax just done for the end of Feb I could do without the extra cost right now. 

[MikeR]

Grim reaper sausages from Aldi for breakfast .....

 

Thats the eyes and nose cleared ...

 

Digestive tract later ...

[Jim Bell]

What is this car abandoned in the Fukushima exclusion zone?

 

Looks a bit like a 306 sedan.